video games are good, except when they're not

May 13, 2016May 13, 2016

Day 134: Super Smash Bros. Melee

I really really dislike Smash Bros.

That’s probably not the most welcoming place to start, but it was going to come up sooner or later in our relationship and there was never really a good time for me to bring it up. Sorry. I know Smash is a touchy subject for some people, and by that, I mean that the people that love Smash Bros REALLY love Smash Bros.

Unlike many on the internet, I tend not to be bothered with the fact that my enjoyment level of a product may not vibe with that of other people, so outside of being played up for some sort of comedic effect, I don’t spend a lot of time with things that I hate, what with life being too short and all of that. The thing is that Smash Bros. has never done anything particularly egregious to earn my vitriol. It simply exists, its greatest sin perhaps being that it’s a woefully transparent nostalgia grab centered around gameplay that I couldn’t imagine engaging with for more than a half hour at a time.

But so many love it that I find myself constantly reevaluating why I’ve immediately bounced off of the series every time I’ve tried it, not for validation as much as a hope that I’ll one day reach that revelatory moment when I discover exactly what it is that I’m missing. Despite my general disinterest, I’m apparently quite good at the game and I’m aware that there exists a layer of depth beneath the chaotic mashy surface, even if it’s place in the competitive scene next to more traditional fighters has always been incredibly strange to me.

I think the real answer is that I simply don’t get a warm fuzzy feeling at the sight of iconic characters. Yes, I’m a lifelong Sega kid but this isn’t a phenomenon exclusive to Nintendo, they just happen to be a company that spends a vast majority of their resources marketing nostalgia. Smash Bros is the ultimate culmination of that and thus the true reason why it’ll always exist in that weird space for me, a celebration of something that I’m kinda sorta tired of celebrating, resulting in a package that is, for a majority of people, more than the sum of its parts.

I’m okay with that. People are certainly allowed to like different things and I don’t think less of you for it, just as I hope one wouldn’t feel the same about me disliking it. I know that sounds extremely rudimentary, but that particular flavor of tolerance is an increasingly rare thing to find on this world wide web of ours. It’s cool. We can still be friends.

Unless you’re one of those Mario Party people, then I consider you a special kind of monster.